Making Our Communities Sustainable
33
Climate change
Dramatic changes in the climate are occuring all around the world and
causing more frequent natural disasters and serious problems for people’s
health. In some places there are more floods and severe storms, and in other
places there is less rain and more drought.
This situation, called climate change or global warming, is really a group
of environmemtal problems including deforestation, increased pollution of our
water and air, and loss of wildlife. These problems cause small increases in the
planet’s temperature that lead to big, permanent changes in the climate.
Changes in the climate cause disasters that affect people everywhere.
Severe storms and floods destroy homes and crops, drought leads to famine,
and insects and animals spread disease when they move to new places because
of changing weather.
Causes of global warming
The environment has a natural ability to absorb pollution. But if too much
pollution is put into the environment, the earth cannot absorb it. Over the last
100 years, when people started to remove and burn large amounts of fossil fuels
such as oil and coal, the amount of pollution released into the environment
increased faster than ever before. This is one of the causes of global warming.
Also, some chemicals invented for manufacturing pollute the air and cannot be
absorbed. They too contribute to global warming.
At its root, climate change, like almost all environmental health problems, is
the result of unfair, unequal, and unsustainable use of resources. Countries that
are now wealthy such as the United States achieved their current standard of
living by polluting the air and using up resources from other parts of the world
– starting climate change. When poor countries began to follow the same path
of overconsumption and pollution to improve their standards of living, it became
clear that this type of development would lead to global environmental disaster.
But abandoning this type of development
does not mean that poor countries
cannot continue fighting to improve the
standards of living in their communities.
A new kind of development is possible and
needed, based on equality and health for
all people, not only the rich. We need to
stop depending on fossil fuels and toxic
chemicals and start using clean energy and
clean production processes (see Chapters
20 and 23). We must all participate in
transforming our societies, and those with
more resources should contribute more to
that process.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012